


Never Asked for This

by captainimprobable



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Family, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Friendship, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainimprobable/pseuds/captainimprobable
Summary: "What does it mean that her stomach drops a little every time she looks up at the other cavities gouged out of the rock? That her chest hurts, every so often, when she isn’t running races against herself, or climbing up the sides of the wall, when she’s silent and static and her eyes close, and for the first time it scares her that she sees nothing?She sits, and she aches, and she wonders.  What does it mean to be alone?"~~I've always wondered what Amethyst's life was like before she found the Crystal Gems, so here's my version!
Relationships: Amethyst & Pearl (Steven Universe), platonic though!
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	Never Asked for This

When she emerges, it is with little fanfare.

There is no voice announcing her presence, no friendly chatter welcoming her into the fold; there is only dust and the distant rumble of a train in the distance.

Her eyes open, and she sees light. There is no adjusting, no squinting; gems are made to perfection, of this she is acutely aware. As she takes in her surroundings, she catalogs all the information she knows.

One, she is a gem. There is no clear indication as to what that means, but she’s not too worried about it yet. 

Two, she can move. She takes a few tentative steps forward, tripping lightly on rocks as she teaches herself to walk. It takes about two seconds, and before long she is running and cartwheeling like a deranged gymnast on four cups of coffee. 

_ This,  _ she thinks,  _ rules. _

Three, she is supposed to be doing... something. She isn’t sure what that something is, but as she looks around and realizes she’s completely alone, she figures that if it were important, someone would be here to tell her. So she dismisses the feeling of _needing to go_ , _needing to move,_ _needing to fight._ She pushes it down until it becomes just a flutter in the back of her mind, something to focus on some other time.

She is surrounded by rock as far as the eye can see, and she gazes in wonder at all the holes harshly puncturing the canyon walls and marring its surface.

It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

She decides she likes the sky, too, once she gets a good look at it, and she spends quite a few moments staring upward, half convinced that, unless she hangs on to the ground tighter, she is going to fall upward into the blue abyss.

As the days go by her home slowly becomes familiar, the simplicity of it all comforting in a way she doesn’t know how to describe. She falls deeper in love with the dirt and the rocks every day, and it is her entire world. It doesn’t occur to her that there is anything else to see. She is alone, and she is happy, though she won’t recognize the feeling until much later on.

The centuries pass, though she doesn’t notice. 

Time means nothing to her, a stream she can just barely hear the roar of, only loud enough to be constant and comforting and  _ there _ , but never affecting her directly. 

It is quite a few years before she begins to notice something that slows her down, forcing her to stop moving quite as quickly. Feelings are slow to form, sluggish and unnameable but very clearly there, and this new one is so intangible she’s not sure what to call it. It feels, she thinks, a lot like the holes in the earth that surround her, though this hole is emptier, more troubling. The craters she’s become used to are familiar. Stable and comfortable, they represent everything she knows to be true.

This new hole is internal, and she aches, a little, but without a proper word for what it is she’s feeling, she’s not sure if it’s even real.

She sits on a rock under the blazing sun and wonders, for the first time, if something is missing. 

She feels a familiar fluttering in the back of her mind, but this time it’s harder to ignore. This time, it makes her think: if her bones and muscles and limbs feel okay, if her physical strength is, as usual, at its peak, if nothing in her body actually hurts, what is left to feel? What does it mean that her stomach drops a little every time she looks up at the other cavities gouged out of the rock? That her chest hurts, every so often, when she isn’t running races against herself, or climbing up the sides of the wall, when she’s silent and static and her eyes close, and for the first time it scares her that she sees nothing?

She sits, and she aches, and she wonders. What does it mean to be alone?

She knows there are Others. She’s even seen a few up close, furry creatures that are sometimes soft, sometimes vicious, and sometimes both, but none of them have ever spoken a word. 

Until the day that one does.

It’s a scorching hot day, one of her favorite kinds of mornings, when the sun is just close enough she almost believes she can touch it. She’s lying on her favorite rock when she hears it; a loud wailing sound disrupting the silence she’s grown so used to. Alarmed, she is immediately on her guard, jumping stealthily off her rock and wondering if today is finally the day she gets into a fight. (She hopes not, though. She has a lot of lying around in the sun to do, and it would be a bummer if something were to interfere with that. Doing nothing, she firmly believes, is a much better purpose for her than anything else.)

At last, she sees a shadow coming from around the corner. She nervously retrieves her whips from within her gem and primes her body for the battle she knows is probably overdue. This is her purpose, her reason for living; she was created to be the ultimate soldier. And if her hands shake and she feels dread pooling in her stomach, thick and soupy and made of something she would rather have nothing to do with, that means nothing. They’ve finally come for her, and she’s ready she’s ready  _ she’s ready _

She is very much not ready.

She has only a split second to realize this before the creature emerges, tailing its shadow, and when she finally sees it she breathes a sigh of relief. 

Whatever it is, it’s a lot smaller than she is, and it seems to be crying, which means it isn’t a threat at all. Relief and shame well up momentarily inside her, who she is and who she thinks she should be coming together and discovering, for the first time, that they are not the same.

She pushes this down to focus on the creature in front of her. Her first thought, loud and alarming, is “ _ Wow. She looks like me”. _

There are differences, of course. For one, her skin isn’t purple; it’s a beautiful brown color that Amethyst has never seen before. For another, she’s much shorter than Amethyst herself is. She knows that all gems look different though, so that doesn’t intrigue her as much as the fact that she has no visible gem.

“Hey, where’s your gem?”

They are the first words she has ever said to another living soul, barring the rodents that sometimes frequent the kindergarten, and they aren’t very polite. Amethyst decides she’s okay with that, though. She’d long learned that she’s rough around the edges, and it’s clear that subtlety isn’t her strong suit. She has no desire to change this.

The other gem looks up at her, confusion momentarily stopping her tears. “My…what?”

Amethyst shakes her head, waving the question off. It was kind of personal, anyway. Kind of a long shot. She changes tack.

“Fine, whatever, it’s cool if you hide it,” she blows the hair out of her eyes. “Sooooo... are you here to give me a mission or something?” The other gem looks baffled, until her lower lip trembles and she begins to cry again. “I can’t find my Mommy,” she wails, and Amethyst is well and truly confused, now. 

But her life has always been a little weird. She decides to roll with it. 

“Okay!” Amethyst shrugs. “I’ll help you find My Mommy.” The other gem giggles, a bright, happy sound Amethyst has never heard before.

It’s absolutely wonderful.

“No, silly, not  _ your _ mommy. My mommy!” The other gem points to Amethyst, and then herself, tears drying as she rolls her eyes.

Amethyst has no idea what is going on, but the crying has stopped, so she takes that as a minor victory. “So why did you come to my kindergarten?” she asks conversationally. The creature gasps.   
  
“You’re in kindergarten??? I’m in kindergarten!!!! What class are you in? I have Mrs. Sortel, she’s super nice but she sometimes gives out frowny face stickers which my Mama says is ‘not appropriate conditioning behavior’ but I don’t know what that means!!!! My name is Lulu! What’s yours?”

Without waiting for an answer, she grabs Amethyst’s hand and begins pulling her around the corner.   
  
Her hand is so, so small.

The words fly out quickly, and Amethyst tries her best to keep up. 

“Mommy says if I get lost I should go back the way I came. And also I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” She pauses, looking critically at Amethyst, who is now at a complete loss for words. 

“You’re a stranger….but, oh!!! You’re not a scary grown up, you’re in kindergarten like me!” They continue walking, the girl striding confidently and Amethyst following along, bewildered. 

The gem glances up at Amethyst, absentmindedly kicking rocks out of her way. “I like your necklace,” she says shyly, as though just realizing Amethyst hasn’t contributed to the conversation in five minutes. Amethyst’s eyes are wider than they’ve ever been. She hasn’t been trained for this. (She hasn’t been trained for  _ anything, _ but right now, she decides, that’s not important.) 

She is painfully aware that they are getting closer and closer to the entrance to the kindergarten, a boundary she’s barely explored for reasons she doesn’t fully understand. She isn’t afraid, though. Gems don’t feel fear. 

Gems don’t feel fear.   
  


Gems don’t feel fear.  
  


She ignores this and shakes her head as though trying to dislodge the thought. Her primary concern right now is this strange kindergartener, so she tunes back into the conversation. “My…what?”    
  
Lulu gestures to Amethyst’s gem. “The purple necklace! It’s real pretty, and it matches your skin!” She pauses thoughtfully. “I didn’t know humans could come with purple skin, that’s so so so SO cool.”

Lulu is skipping, now, Amethyst trailing behind like a deflated balloon. 

A very lost, very confused balloon. 

Amethyst feels as though someone has cut into her skull, ripped her brain wide open, and started mixing her thoughts together with a large spoon. Nothing makes sense anymore. She does, however, latch on to one word.

They’re getting closer and closer to the cacti that signal the edge of her home. She doesn’t want to think about it.

“Did you say you’re a human?” 

Lulu nods solemnly. “Once I tried being a fairy but only for like two days, because when I tried to give out wishes it didn’t work, so I went back to being human!”

“Wow,” Amethyst whispers in awe.

They’ve reached the edge, now. She’s never been this far from her rocks before, and as she looks at the landscape beyond her home, she’s astounded by just how _ much  _ of it there is. It just keeps going and going, and she imagines that if she ran all the way to the end she’d reach the sky. There are colors she’s never seen, yellows and pinks and greens,  _ so much green,  _ trees and bushes and plants as far as she can see. 

It looks nothing like her part of the kindergarten. 

For the first time, she wonders if maybe, just maybe, there’s a world beyond hers. 

Before she can dwell on that, though, she hears a panicked voice. “Lulu!” 

A creature- no, a  _ human _ , Amethyst thinks, runs up to them and grabs Lulu in her arms, squeezing her tightly. 

“Oh thank god, thank god,” she rocks Lulu back and forth as her voice trembles. 

“Did you help her find her way back?”   
  
Amethyst is startled to realize that that human is talking to her, and she has absolutely no idea what to say. Instead, she shrugs.

“That’s my new friend, Mommy! She’s in kindergarten too!”

At Lulu’s words, Mommy studies Amethyst, the look in her eye changing from relief to something Amethyst doesn’t recognize. Slowly, so slowly, the human kneels down until she’s eye to eye with Amethyst. 

Startled, Amethyst automatically levels her a defiant glare; this human doesn’t feel as safe as Lulu, and there’s too much in that expression that she doesn’t understand. 

She doesn’t like it one bit.

“Sweetie,” Mommy says. “Where are your parents?” Amethyst raises her eyebrow. “What’s a parent?”

The look on Mommy’s face changes  _ again, _ and Amethyst is pretty sure she recognizes this one. Sadness, she understands.

“Did you get separated from your family too?” Mommy asks. “Do you know where they are?” 

“My...family?” The word fills her with something she isn’t sure she’s ready for yet, and all at once she’s decided she’s reached her limit. She’s done, she’s tapped out, too much confusion for the day, thank you.

She begins talking even faster than Lulu.

“Yeah, my family’s…back there. I gotta go. Uh, back to them now,” she blurts out, turning abruptly to leave. Before she gets up enough speed to run, though, she feels a soft touch on her elbow. When she turns, Lulu is standing there, ruffling through her pockets. Before Amethyst can say a word, the little girl finds what she’s looking for and proudly presents to her something in a colorful wrapper.

“It’s a lollipop,” she says, dangling it from her fingers. “It tastes really good, I promise!”

After a beat, Amethyst reaches out and gingerly takes the candy, cradling it like she would a fragile animal.

“Thanks for helping me!” Lulu chirps and, faster than light, gives her a brief hug. 

Before Amethyst can react, Lulu is skipping away. 

She shakes herself out of her stupor, tightens her grip around the lollipop, and finally manages to run. As she goes, a small “see you later!” echoes through the canyon, following her the whole way home.

Once she gets back to her turf,, she looks around, breathing hard. Everything is the same as it’s always been. The rocks still in their places, the holes still where they’ve always been. But something about it feels different now. She goes back to her favorite sleeping rock, watches the sun set, and tries to pretend her world hasn’t just been turned upside down.

“Family.” Her voice jumps around the canyon until she finally hears the word flying towards her again, like the empty crevices in the rock are repeating it right back.

Family.

She decides she likes the taste of the word.

~~   
She names her rocks.   
  
She doesn’t quite understand why, but she knows that something has changed, and she wants to keep up.   
  
Loneliness isn’t something she is familiar with. At least, that’s what she tells herself, when she’s lying on the ground at night, staring up at the stars and thinking about how far away they look. As the days go by, though, she admits that maybe, just maybe, she’s finally found a word for what it means when she aches. What it means that her heart doesn’t feel whole.

It’s harder to ignore, now that she knows. She sits on the same ground that’s always been there, occupying her mind with the same games she’s made up over the centuries, and she tries to pretend that it is enough.

She almost starts to believe it, too.   
~~

She’s resting in the shade when it happens. It’s very quick; the kindergarten is silent until, suddenly, it isn’t. 

She curiously peeks out of her hole just in time to get blinded by the bright light, and she has to blink a few times before she can see properly again.

When she finally can, there is someone else in the kindergarten.

As the light fades, she stares in awe at the perplexing figure that just appeared on what she will later learn is called a warp pad. It’s definitely a living being, tall and skinny, and her heart skips as she wonders:  _ human or gem? _ She’s not sure which one she’s hoping for, at this point.

At last, the creature turns, and Amethyst takes in some minor details (no weapon, wide blue eyes, not currently hostile) before she clocks the gem on her forehead. 

Excitement completely overwhelms her desire to stay safe, and before she even knows what she’s doing she’s shouting. “You’re a gem!!!” she yells, jumping out of the shadows to land in front of the other gem (oh man oh man ohmanohman-) and then, as an afterthought, halfheartedly retrieving her whips. 

Just in case she has to beat down on the potential enemy.

It’s immediately clear, however, that Amethyst would be no match for this newcomer. Despite the fact that the other gem jumps in surprise at Amethyst’s yell, and the fact that her limbs look like tree branches about to break, Amethyst senses power. This gem is clearly much stronger than she looks, and Amethyst instinctively knows that in a fight against this gem, she would lose every time.

Twig Arms fidgets nervously, piano fingers reflexively opening and closing as though she’s trying to grab the right words out of the air. Finally, she makes her choice.

“Hi, Amethyst.”

Alarmed, Amethyst takes a cautious step back as the gem stands up straighter.

“How do you know who I am?”

She receives a nervous smile in return, followed by the lightest laughter Amethyst has ever heard.

“That’s...kind of a long story, but I’ll keep it even: I’m Pearl. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Amethyst waves off the attempt at pleasantries and grips her whips so tightly she can feel her fingernails digging into her palms.    
  
She has to know. She’s nervous, but she has to know.

“Are you here to tell me what I was made for?”

There is dead silence for a moment, during which Amethyst feels her heart beating harder and faster than she’s ever felt it. Pearl blinks, and they stare at each other for a few seconds, Amethyst trying in vain to pretend she isn’t shaking. Finally, Pearl breaks out into a smile much smaller than before, though Amethyst senses this one is much more genuine.

“No, Amethyst. I’m not.” She shakes her head and shrugs simply.

“That’s not how it works here on Earth.”   
  
Amethyst narrows her eyes in suspicion. Admittedly, she doesn’t know much about gem culture, but she knows enough to recognize that this isn’t right. “Okay,” she takes a few more steps back and tightens her grip on her weapons. “So why are you here?”

“I...well, honestly, I don’t entirely know.” When Amethyst just raises her eyebrow in return, Pearl continues, notably not getting any closer

“Garnet told me it was time to come get you. She doesn’t know why, but for some reason…” She looks Amethyst in the eye, her gaze steely and piercing, and somehow, for the first time, Amethyst feels  _ seen _ . 

“For some reason, she’s sure that you’re supposed to be part of our family.”   
  
“Family?”   
  
The taste of sugar erupts on her tongue as her heart quickens, and she remembers tiny hands and a loud giggle and the feeling of  _ wanting _ .

“ _ Did you get separated from your family, too?” _

She lets herself feel hopeful for a count of three, and then shuts it down. There’s a catch, there’s always a catch, and she’s determined to find out what it is.

“And what if I say no?”

Pearl shrugs. “That’s your choice.”

Silence.

And then, before she knows it, Amethyst is laughing. It’s loud and it’s obnoxious, and Pearl looks confused and a little embarrassed, like she’s worried somebody nearby might get annoyed and complain.

“My...choice…” Amethyst snorts, tears streaming down her face, and before she knows it she’s crying.

Actually crying, crouched right there in the dirt. Crying because she’d spent her entire life wondering what she was for, why she was made. Centuries spent on tenterhooks, anxiously waiting for someone to try to tell her what to do, wondering if that was even what she wanted.

Crying because really, she’s known all along that she’s been desperately cobbling together pieces of a life she pretended she wanted. She’d never left, never taken a step outside her home, because she never knew which of her strides might be out of line.

And after everything, it had been her choice all along.

It takes awhile for the tears to stop, and Pearl is a patient if not a bit of an uncomfortable observer. She sits quietly on the edge of the warp pad, hands crossed primly on her lap, apparently content to wait Amethyst out.

Minutes pass and the tears turn to hiccups. When Amethyst finally stands up shakily, Pearl attempts to pretend she doesn’t notice all the snot still streaming steadily out of her nose, but can’t hide the obvious distaste in her eyes.

Amethyst grins through her tears, and pointedly rubs her nose with the back of her hand. Then she offers that hand to Pearl, and delights in the absolute horror crossing her features.  _ This _ , she decides,  _ is going to be fun _ .

It both surprises and impresses her when Pearl grabs the hand, a look of challenge on her face.

They walk hand in hand back to the warp pad, and Amethyst doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Am I supposed to be writing other things??? Absolutely. Does that matter? Absolutely not.
> 
> Don't be afraid to let me know what you think in the comments! Thanks for reading!
> 
> As always, find me @captainimprobable on tumblr and insta.


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